Tag Archive: PC

Chinese technology giant Lenovo has said India is “dynamic” market as a sizeable population has very high-end requirements for gaming products.

“India’s population is so big you do not need many people to get into gaming to become a sizeable market. That is why we also picked India as a focus market in terms of gaming. There is a sizeable population that is really into gaming,” Ken Wong, President Asia Pacific & Senior Vice President at Lenovo Group told PTI in an interview during IFA 2017 event in Berlin.

That is why there was a recent launch of the Legion brand gaming PC in India, he said.

“We are receiving very good feedback on Legion. And I strongly believe that this market will continue to grow in India,” Wong added.

The dedicated gaming PCs Legion Y520 and Y720 were introduced in India in May this year.

Even as these new gaming devices will not be available in India, Wong sees it is a very dynamic market.

“When we talk about market, India is a very dynamic market. We see very high end and extreme requirements. There are also many main stream requirements, for example, gaming on the phone,” Wong said.

Elaborating on gaming products, Wong said a lot of things are happening in the east post of the Asia Pacific region and governments are also supporting this because of revenue potential.

“I do a lot of interaction with different governments, cities, countries, regions. A common thing that is coming out is that governments are actually putting a lot of resources in supporting the gaming industry. I was born in Hong Kong and live there, the government is putting a lot into gaming.

Singapore is doing the same as it is happening everywhere and I think India is also the same (kind),” he added.

Wong said the reason is not about gaming as such but it is about the economics about the gaming.

“Imagine the technology involved, the coding, which I think is a very strong part of India. Software development, coding is the number one pillar that I can think of as a strength of India. Events like Asian games are very important revenue streams,” he said.

Wong said Lenovo is putting in a lot of thinking into gaming devices and that is why it has upgraded the gaming PCs under Lenovo Legion brand.

“If you look at our endeavour, I think we are putting in $1.2-1.3 billion (roughly Rs. 7,657 – 8,295 crores) on an annual basis (into gaming products),” he said.

Gaming is not like a casual (activity) in Asia Pacific, but given the size of millennial, they not only want premium products but also want to enjoy life through technology.

“The market is actually moving toward more premium, we actually see more growth from the premium side of the market.”

“We have seen some very good results in the past 12 months. We are number one in Malaysia in terms of market share, we have been enjoying at least double digit premium to the market growth in terms of gaming in India, Thailand, Malaysia, Philippines and Singapore,” Wong said.

Intel’s more than two decade reign as king of the silicon-based semiconductor ended Thursday when Samsung Electronics surpassed the US manufacturer to become the leading maker of the computer chips that are a 21st century staple much as oil was in the past.

Samsung reported record-high profit and sales in its earnings report for the April-June quarter, and while Intel’s reported earnings beat forecasts, the US company’s entire revenue was smaller than sales from Samsung’s chip division.

Samsung said its semiconductor business recorded 8 trillion ($7.2 billion) in operating income on revenue of KRW 17.6 trillion ($15.8 billion) in the quarter.

“Given Samsung’s strength today in flash memory, I am not surprised Samsung surpassed Intel in semiconductor revenue,” said Patrick Moorhead, principal analyst with Moor Insights & Strategy, adding that Intel may be able to catch up Samsung when Intel’s memory output is at full production capacity in about six months. “I think we will see a lot of back and forth between the two companies.”

On an annual basis, Samsung’s semiconductor division is widely expected to overtake Intel’s sales this year, analysts at brokerages and market research firms say.

Mobile devices and data are the keys to understanding Samsung’s ascent as the new industry leader, even as its de facto chief is jailed, battling corruption charges, and it recovers from the fiasco last year over the fire-prone Galaxy Note 7 smartphones.

Manufacturers are packing more and more memory storage capacity into ever smaller mobile gadgets, as increased use of mobile applications, connected devices and cloud computing services drive up demand and consequently prices for memory chips, an area dominated by Samsung.

Just as Saudi Arabia dominates in oil output, Samsung leads in manufacturing the high-tech commodity of memory chips, which enable the world to store the data that fuels the digital economy.

“Data is the new crude oil,” said Marcello Ahn, a Seoul, South Korea-based fund manager at Quad Investment Management.

For over a decade, Samsung and Intel each ruled the market in its own category of semiconductor.

Intel, the dominant supplier of the processors that serve as brains for personal computers, has been the world’s largest semiconductor company by revenue since 1992 when it overtook Japan’s NEC.

Samsung is reaping the rewards of dominating in the memory chip market that is growing much faster than the market for computers that rely on processing units dominated by Intel, said Chung Chang Won, a senior analyst at Nomura Securities.

“Greater use of smartphones and tablet PCs instead of computers is driving the rise of companies like Samsung,” Chung said.

Since 2002, Samsung Electronics has been the largest supplier of memory chips, called DRAMs and NANDs. But for years demand for memory chips was vulnerable to boom-and-bust cycles depending on output and on demand from the consumer electronics industry. At times, competition was brutal as supply gluts arose.

That changed in 2012 when Japan’s Elpida filed for bankruptcy and was sold to Micron Technology, leaving only three major suppliers of DRAM, a type of memory chip used in servers, computers and handsets: Samsung Electronics, SK Hynix and Micron.

Tight supplies coupled with rock solid demand have pushed prices of memory chips higher, with average selling prices of DRAMs and flash memory chips doubling over the past year, bringing South Korea’s memory chip makers record wide profit margins. Both Samsung and SK Hynix are expected to report all-time high profits this year.

Amid this boom that analysts call a memory chip “super cycle,” global semiconductor revenue is forecast to jump 52 percent this year, reaching $400 billion (roughly Rs. 25,65,531 crores) for the first time, according to market research firm Gartner.

For the full year, Intel is expected to post $60 billion (roughly Rs. 3,84,829 crores) in annual sales, according to a market consensus polled by FactSet, a financial data provider. Samsung Electronics’ semiconductor business is expected to report KRW 71.9 trillion ($62.6 billion) in full-year revenues.

Looking ahead, Samsung and SK Hynix, which control more than three quarters of the global DRAM sales, are raising their spending on semiconductor capacity and development in anticipation of robust future demand. SK Hynix raised its capital spending to KRW 9.6 trillion ($8.6 billion) this year, up more than 50 percent from last year. Samsung has said it plans to spend $18 billion in the next four years to expand memory chip production capacity at its South Korean plants.

Not just tech companies but also transport, retail, tourism, food and other industries are seeking ways to better use or manage data, to gain insights on trends or customer preferences and otherwise make money from “big data.” The rising use of vehicle connectivity and the “internet of things” is expected to drive still further demand for the chips that have helped Samsung move ahead, at least for now.

Microsoft Corp. is planning a global sales reorganisation to better focus on selling cloud software, according to people familiar with the matter.

The restructuring is scheduled to be announced as soon as next week and will impact the Worldwide Commercial Business under Judson Althoff and Jean-Philippe Courtois’ global sales and marketing group, the people said.

Job cuts are likely to result from the changes, said the people, who asked not to be identified speaking about unannounced plans. The shifts will be some of the most significant in the sales force in years and will also impact local marketing efforts in various countries, said one of the people. There may be other smaller personnel changes in other parts of the company too, one of other people said. A Microsoft spokesman declined to comment.

The company’s sales force has been trained for years to sell software for use on desktops and servers. Now it’s more important to convince customers to sign up for cloud services hosted in Microsoft’s datacenters. The Redmond, Washington-based company wants to accelerate this switch to add more revenue and catch cloud market leader Amazon.com.

Friday is the end of Microsoft’s fiscal year, the first in which Althoff and Courtois have run the sales and marketing organisations, taking over from Kevin Turner who left in 2016.

The Puget Sound Business Journal reported earlier than the company planned a companywide reorganisation around the cloud.

After WannaCry and Petya, it seems like Microsoft has realised the potential harm that ransomware can cause to its operating systems and its customers’ sensitive information. This might partly be the reason why the Redmond-based company has now introduced new features that provide users protection from such malware with the latest Windows 10 Insider Preview build.

Earlier this week, it detailed the end to end security features it would bring to Windows 10, and some of these features have been brought to the preview build.

With the latest Windows 10 Insider Preview build, version 16232, Microsoft has introduced a new feature called ‘Controlled folder access’ to Windows Defender that protects users’ valuable data from malicious apps and threats (including ransomware), Dona Sarkar, head of Windows Insiders program at Microsoft, said in a blog post.

This new feature essentially monitors the changes that apps make to files in certain folders that are protected. If an app is blacklisted and tries to make changes to files in the protected folders, the user will get a notification about the attempt, Sarkar explains.

“You can complement the protected folders with additional locations, and add the apps that you want to allow access to those folders,” Sarkar said. In order to switch the Controlled folder access feature, Windows Insiders need to head to the Windows Defender Security Center and go to the Virus & threat protection settings section.

To allow certain apps through the feature, users need to click Allow an app through Controlled folder access and locate and add the app.

Apart from this feature, the company has also added ‘Exploit Protection’ with the latest build. “Starting with this build you can now audit, configure, and manage Windows system and application exploit mitigation settings right from the Windows Defender Security Center,” Sarkar said in her post. Notably, Exploit Protection has been described as a work-in-progress and might not be fully function yet, as per the blog post. There were also several improvements to the capabilities of Windows Defender Application Guard (WDAG).

It is good to see that Microsoft is finally responding to the threats to Windows 10 in a constructive manner but the company will have to stay on its feet with the growing capabilities of hackers and leaks of state-sponsored hacking tools.

Domestic mobile and tablet manufacturer Lava on Wednesday announced that it has partnered with Microsoft and Intel to launch its first ever laptop – Helium 14. Priced at just Rs. 14,999, the Lava Helium 14 is a budget laptop that features a full-HD (1080×1920 pixels) display and a sleek lightweight design. The new portable from Lava has already been made available online for purchase exclusively from Flipkart and will also be made available with select retail stores and other multi-brand outlets across Delhi NCR, Coimbatore, Hyderabad and Bangalore from the first week of July.

The Lava Helium 14 C141, as the name indicates, sports a 14.1-inch full-HD display and comes preloaded with Windows 10 Home Edition. The new laptop from Lava is powered by an Intel Atom processor coupled with 2GB of RAM. The Helium 14 comes with 32GB of built-in storage, which is expandable up to 128GB via SD card.

Lava’s first ever laptop houses a 10,000mAh battery, which has been claimed to offer “all day usage” by the company. In order to provide security from the hardware side, the Helium 14 has a built-in microchip called “Trusted Platform Module (TPM)” that has been said to provide all round protection to the laptop. The Helium 14 weighs 1.4kg and has been made available in Silver and Purple colour variants by the company.

Priyadarshi Mohapatra, Country General Manager, Consumer & Devices Sales at Microsoft India, commented on the launch by saying, “We have been working closely with our partners to develop powerful yet affordable personal computing devices to enable Digital India. We are happy to collaborate with Lava to create devices that run on a secure and robust Windows 10 platform, which provides users with enhanced productivity, improved functionality and unified experiences.”

Intel has joined Team8, an Israeli creator of cyber-security startups, as a strategic partner and will help with the formation of companies that address the largest cyber-security problems, Team8 said on Wednesday.

Israel has some 450 cyber startups, which receive 20 percent of global investment in the sector. Although the need for security is growing quickly, the proliferation of start-ups means that several companies compete in every subsector.

Team8 has already launched two cyber companies, Claroty and Illusive Networks, and two others will follow suit soon.

Team8 co-founder and CEO Nadav Zafrir told Reuters that one company will move out of stealth mode in a few weeks while another will do the same in early 2018 without elaborating.

He noted that each of the syndicate members has a different perspective on cyber.

“Citi enables us to see the world from a financial standpoint. With Intel joining we will see the challenges going forward in cyber-security like computing, automotive, cloud, mobile and IoT (Internet of Things),” Zafrir said. “Together we can address the (cyber) problems before they emerge.”

Intel will also collaborate with Illusive, which catches attackers once they break into corporate networks using deception technologies, to help combat so-called advanced persistent threats (APTs).

The alliance between Illusive and Intel extends deception-based cyber security from software to hardware, Illusive said.

“Our collaboration with Illusive networks provides users with more effective defences against sophisticated APTs, in the early stage of the attack, that otherwise go undetected and pose a great threat to enterprises and individuals,” said Jacob Mendel, general manager of Intel’s platform security division.

US President-elect Donald Trump does not make India-born Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella nervous, and he is confident about the tech giant’s place as a job creator.

“We’re a US-based company that operates worldwide and our predominant employment is in the United States,” Indian-American Nadella told CNNTech at the Digital Life Design tech conference in Munich on Monday.

“We’ve already created a tremendous amount of high-paying jobs in the US.”

Microsoft employs over 113,000 people worldwide, more than 64,000 of whom are in the US, mainly in Washington state, according to the company.

But Nadella said Trump’s ascent to become the President has not changed the roadmap much for Microsoft.
“If anything, we’ll double down on what we’ve always done, which is be a US company that operates in the United States very responsibly, but also being a multinational company that contributes into every country that we work in.”

In the wake of Trump’s win in the November 8 election, companies are eager to play up the number of Americans they employ, CNN reported.

Companies like Amazon have made very public announcements about the jobs they expect to add, with messaging that seems to be in direct response to the real-estate magnate’s win.

Last month, the President-elect met with Nadella and 12 other technology titans in a bid to heal rifts and get them on board with his programme of creating more jobs and increasing investments in the US.

Trump, who had slammed the technology sector during his campaign for exporting jobs and manufacturing overseas, hailed them as an “amazing group of people”, and promised them, “I am here to help you folks do well”.
Source : (gadgets.ndtv.com)

One of the showstoppers at CES 2017 was undoubtedly Razer’s concept laptop Project Valerie. Razer felt that a single screen laptop just didn’t cut it anymore so it unveiled a laptop which features three 17.3-inch 4K IGZO displays. The laptop understandably turned a number of heads, so much so that two of the prototypes were stolen from Razer’s booth. The company is now offering a $25,000 reward for any information regarding the theft.

Razer CEO Min-Liang Tan initially reported the theft on his Facebook page on Monday adding that the company has “filed the necessary reports and are currently working with the show management as well as law enforcement to address this issue.”

Tan updated his post confirming the theft had taken place on January 8, the last day of CES 2017. He also confirmed that both the protoypes were Project Valerie laptops.

Razer’s reward comes with certain terms detailed by the company.

“Razer may pay only a portion of the maximum reward offered. The decision will be based primarily upon law enforcement’s evaluation of the value of the information provided. When there are multiple claimants, the reward will be shared in amounts determined by Razer. Razer associates are not eligible for the reward. This reward offer is good for one year from the date it is first offered, unless extended by Razer.”
Min-Liang Tan urged anyone with any information regarding the thefts to mail the company at legal@razerzone.com. The information provided will be “kept in the strictest of confidence,” he said.

It isn’t uncommon for Razer to witness such incidents regarding their products. In late 2011, Razer had reported that two of its Razer Blade prototypes were stolen from the company’s Bay area R&D lab.

Razer has often pushed the limits of its gaming laptops which become the envy of gamers everywhere. Stealing these prototypes, however, is a new low for any individual. In fact, the company is not ruling out industrial espionage, according to Min-Liang Tan post.

“We treat theft/larceny, and if relevant to this case, industrial espionage, very seriously – it is cheating, and cheating doesn’t sit well with us. Penalties for such crimes are grievous and anyone who would do this clearly isn’t very smart.”

Apart from the concept Project Valerie laptop, Razer also unveiled the Project Ariana projection system and Razer Chroma at CES 2017.

Third-quarter revenue from the company’s computer business rose 7.5 percent from the second quarter as sales of notebooks improved.

From a year earlier, sales were flat in the business, which accounts for two-thirds of HP’s total revenue, showing signs of recovery after a drop in the past two quarters.

Notebook volumes increased 12 percent, but the benefit was offset by weak desktop sales and low demand from commercial clients. Revenue from its printer business declined 14.3 percent from a year earlier and 4.6 percent from the second quarter.

“The markets remaining challenging and somewhat volatile,” Chief Executive Dion Weisler said on a conference call. “We have more work to do.”
HP said it cut about 1,000 jobs in the third quarter, taking the total number of job cuts to about 2,300 this year.

The company, which had about 287,000 employees as of October 31, said in February that it expected to slash around 3,000 jobs by the end of this fiscal year.

Weak forecast
HP forecast adjusted earnings of 34-37 cents per share from continuing operations for the current quarter. Analysts on average were expecting 41 cents per share, according to Thomson Reuters.

Net earnings from continuing operations rose more than a fifth to $843 million (roughly Rs. 5,650 crores), or 49 cents per share, in the three months ended July 31, as costs fell about 9 percent.

Excluding items, HP earned 48 cents per share, beating the average analyst estimate of 44 cents. Total revenue fell 3.8 percent to $11.89 billion (roughly Rs. 79,769 crores), but topped the average estimate of $11.46 billion. HP shares were trading at $13.60 after the bell.

Up to Wednesday’s close, the stock had risen 12.5 percent since HP started trading as a separate company.

US-based Intel on Tuesday announced a deal to buy an artificial intelligence startup as the computer chip colossus looks to broaden its role in data centers and the expanding internet of things.

Intel did not disclose how much it is paying for Nervana Systems, but US media reports put the price at more than $350 million (roughly Rs. 2,333 crores).

“With this acquisition, Intel is formally committing to pushing the forefront of AI (artificial intelligence) technologies,” Nervana co-founder and chief executive Naveen Rao said in a blog post.

“We can now shatter the old paradigm and move into a new regime of computing.”

Founded two years ago in Southern California, Nervana has specialized in combining hardware and software to help machines think in ways similar to human brains, according to the companies.

Intel plans to put Nervana expertise to work in Xeon and Xeon Phi chips to better handle “deep learning” in the Internet cloud, Intel data center group executive vice president Diane Bryant said in an online post.

“While artificial intelligence is often equated with great science fiction, it isn’t relegated to novels and movies,” Bryant said.